Stochastic Computing DSCI216

Outcomes

Upon completion of this project students will gain experience with reliability

analysis and the construction of and experimentation with simulations of

probabilistic systems comprised of interacting parts.

iuww520iuww520iuww520iuww520iuww520iuww520iuww520iuww520

The Assignment

Invented in 1987, Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID), represented a significant improvement in performance and significant cost savings by

demonstrating that through algorithmic means, disk performance could be

improved by aggregating inexpensive devices versus using a single expensive high performance device. In this assignment, after considering motivating questions, you will model a RAID 10 system and evaluate the impact on performance due to mirroring.

The evolution of RAID begins with RAID 0. This technology begins with multiple disks. In RAID 0 (Figure 1), blocks of file storage are scattered across multiple disks, namely stripes. Because different parts of the same file are accessed on multiple physically different devices, all of the disk stripes must run in order for file operations to succeed. That is, pieces of the same file exist across different physical disks. In order to read or write a file, each of the disks in which a piece of a file is stored must run. In the RAID 0 example below (Figure 1) we have two stripes.

Thus, in order to read or write a file, pieces of the file on each device must be

accessed.

The next step in the evolution of RAID continued with RAID 1. This technology begins with multiple disks. In RAID 1 (Figure 2), a complete copy of all the blocks for a file are maintained on each of multiple physically different devices. These complete copies, namely mirror disks, are able to accept read/write requests for a file. Because each mirror maintains its own complete copy of the file, only one mirror must run in order for a file operation to succeed.

A key innovation in the evolution of RAID combined RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring) to form mirrored stripes, namely RAID 1+0 or RAID 10 (Figure 3). In RAID 10, we combine striping and mirroring. That is we maintain stripe disks (Disk 1 and Disk 3), but a complete copy of the stripes is also maintained (Disk 2 and Disk 4). The impact of RAID 10 is both a performance improvement attributed to striping as well as robustness attributed to the mirroring.